


Skin

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Touching, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: She has always been a sonnet written in a language he didn’t understand, composed and balanced.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: N/A  
> A/N: For @perplexistan  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

He imagines that she’s flawless. Her skin has a certain luminescence even under the wan fluorescent lights of the basement. She looks like a the subject of a Vermeer painting: Woman With A Report To File, Mulder, Why Are You Staring At Me. He imagines running his hands over the smoothness of her, the redemption he might find in her arms. She makes him feel rough, scruffy, unkempt. Even the mole above her lip she tries to hide is exquisite. He remembers the pale plane of her back in the candlelight in the hotel room in Bellefleur. She was an unwritten story, or at least an unreadable one, the curves of her as blank and cool as alabaster. 

Years later, when he finally touches her, his fingertips read her scars like Braille, a record of the things they’ve accomplished and the mistakes he’s made. She lingers over his scars too, touching the livid marks with the blessing of her mouth. She reads him through, her palms smoothing away his bruises and scuffs. Her touch remakes him, sanctifying his mistakes. With his skin against hers, they transcend their pasts together. He forgets the aches of broken bones and broken hearts, of bullet wounds and betrayals. 

She was never unmarked, he thinks; she has always been a sonnet written in a language he didn’t understand, composed and balanced. Her skin could never contain the truth of her. He remembers when they met. She was so contained. He didn’t understand the grandeur of her. Touching her, he remembers the incomprehensibility of the universe, the multiplicity of dimensions curled inside each other, the vastness of interior spaces.


End file.
